Scorched Earth

From CS196 Games Research

Title: Scorched Earth

Tagline: The Mother of All Games

Developer: Wendell Hicken

Year of Release: 1991

Genre: Turn-based Artillery

Target Audience: People who enjoy Turn-based Artillery games (All Ages).

Innovation Keywords: Customizability, Weapon Variety, Dynamic Environment

Goal: A handful of players, both CPU and Human, do battle in a dynamic 2D environment by taking turns firing a variety of weapons at each other's tanks. In single-round play, the winner is the last tank standing. In multi-round play, players are given different amounts of money depending on how they place and the winner at the end of all rounds is the player with the most money.

When a new game is started, the user specifies the number of players that will play, as well as which players will be human and which will be controlled by the CPU. The difficulty level of the CPU players is also specified at this time. Each player is then given a configurable amount of money to start with and is presented with a vast array of weapons and items from which purchases can be made. By spending money intelligently and strategically, a player can gain an initial advantage over his opponents.

Once all players have been armed, the players' tanks are placed randomly in a 2D environment which consist of either randomly generated or pre-built terrain. The user can configure the environment to have a number of weather effects including wind and lighting storms. The wind effects the trajectory of weapons while the lightning storm can damage or destroy a tank if it hits it.

Players then take turns shooting at one another. In each turn, the player can choose which of his weapons to use as well as the angle and power of the shot. Once the fire button is pressed, all the player can do is cross his fingers and hope that his shot hits its mark.

Innovation: The main innovations present in Scorched Earth are its extensive customizability, its large variety of weapons and other items, and its dynamic environments.

The developer of Scorched Earth, Wendell Hicken, was clearly trying to reach a wide audience with his game. Almost every aspect of gameplay is configurable by the user--the amount of money one starts with, the types of weapons one can buy, the amount of wind, gravity, meteors, and storms in the environment, and even how the artillery shells interact with the walls of the environment. Such a game stood out from many others of the time in which users were often forced to deal with the arbitrary choices that the programmers made for various game parameters.

Perhaps the most exciting part of playing scorched earth is choosing and using the weapons, which range from small missiles to massive nuclear warheads. In additional to the standard hit-to-kill weapons, there are a number of weapons which can cause damage indirectly--napalm bombs release napalm which flows over the terrain, digger bombs burrow into the terrain and remove large amounts of earth, earth bombs which bury other players in dirt, bouncing bombs, etc. Then there are items which allow the player to defend against certain types of attacks--parachutes allow the tank to gently drift down instead of falling when earth is removed from under it, gas packs allow the tank to drive short distances to avoid close range weapons, and a variety of shields.

The large number of weapons and items allows for a huge number of situations to arise in game play. With a static environment, however, one would eventually get bored. Therefore another of Scorched Earth's innovations is its use of a dynamic environment. Terrain can be added and removed quickly, changing the optimal strategy. Random factors like wind, meteors, and lightning keep players on their toes.

Fun: The innovations discussed certainly contribute to fun of playing Scorched Earth. As already discussed, a highly customizable game is fun to more people for longer. The huge amount of weapons and items keeps players busy thinking up new strategies for defending themselves and new ways to kill their opponents. The dynamic environment introduces a level of randomness and unpredictability which rules out any sort of simple systematic strategy.

In my mind, however, the social aspects of the game are the most fun. Unlike modern networked games, a multi-player game of Scorched Earth must be played on a single computer. All the players must gather around the screen, and must watch each other take turns. It is hard to describe the joy of watching your opponent's face when you destroy their tank, or the agony of watching an opponent aiming for you and knowing that all you can do is cross your fingers.

Influences: The games Worms and GunBound both clearly borrow heavily from Scorched Earth--they belong to a genre that is practically defined by Scorched Earth. Though they have modern features like network play, fancy(er) graphics, and the ability to move around the level more freely, they still use huge libraries of weapons and items to make the game fun, and dynamic environments and customizability to keep the game from getting boring.